On finding your calling

I’ll confess: I’ve always been envious of people who know their gifting and chase hard after what they feel they were put on earth to do. For the past few years my husband and I have wrestled with our vocational lives in somewhat dramatic fashion. We have bought and sold a business, launched a startup, moved out of state to pursue a dream and then back home when that didn’t go as planned. I re-entered the traditional workforce, and he has most recently returned to his original profession. We’re tired of thinking about calling and vocation. 

We don’t always have the same taste in television and movies, but we both enjoy watching stories about incredible athletes. So a few years ago we were excited to see Free Solo, an Oscar-winning documentary that profiles professional climber Alex Honnold. The film follows Honnold as he sets out to be the first person to solo climb all 3000 feet of the El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite. If you’re like me and don’t know much about rock climbing or Yosemite, this means he attempts to climb a piece of granite the height of three Empire State buildings without a rope or a partner. It’s pure insanity and unnerving to watch even on a television screen.

Around the same time that Honnold’s film came out, Lindsey Vonn did an interview on “The Today Show” about her retirement from downhill skiing. Vonn is the first American woman to win Olympic gold in downhill and is a World Cup champion in all five disciplines of alpine skiing. She’s widely considered to be one of the greatest skiiers of all time. 

Vonn reluctantly retired at age 34 because of the toll injuries had taken on her body. During the interview, Hoda Kotb said that she thinks Vonn’s career could best be summed up by these words from a Washington Post editorial, “Many years from now—long after the cheering has died away—the moutains will remember her.”

Both of these athletes’ stories are compelling. Of course, their skill and bravery in their respective sports is superhuman. I don’t envy their specific paths or the feats they’ve accomplished. Nothing in me desires to dangle from the side of a mountain or propel my body down one at 90 miles per hour. 

Alex Honnold is an atheist and I don’t know where Lindsey Vonn lands with her theology. I don’t look to either or them for spiritual inspiration. But I do stand in awe of their unquestionable awareness of what they have been created to do. They know their respective things, and they have crafted fascinating stories pursuing those passions. Undoubtedly, “Many years from now… the mountains will remember them.”

Meanwhile I am 40-something and still in search of my “thing.” What I know is that I have not left my mark on any mountains. It’s far more likely to be said of me, “Many years from now… Target will remember her.” And perhaps Starbucks will, too. 

I’m not proud of this.

Awhile ago one of my ever inquisitive children started talking about careers.

Her: Why don’t you want to be a teacher?
Me: Well, I don’t think I would be very good at teaching.
Her: Why?
Me: I’m not sure. It’s just never been my thing.
Her: Well, what is your thing?
{*crickets*}
Me: I’m not sure of that yet. But right now my main thing is raising you.

And with that, the conversation switched to more pressing matters like what snack she would be having when we got home. There’s nothing quite like a child’s innocent interrogations to make you start questioning the direction of your whole life.

When I pause to consider that conversation and super-athletes like Honnold and Vonn, I can quickly feel discouraged about what I’m doing from day to day. My lack of clarity, or maybe more so my lack of accolades and success, in any one area gives me pause. Even though I have a “real” job again, I don’t think it’s my long-term vocational calling. And while I keep coming back to this space where I write and share thoughts in blog form, what if it’s only ever a hobby?

To be clear, I’m not confused about God’s will for my life. I believe it is simple and the same for each of us: Love God. Love and serve our neighbors (including those who live in our home). Where I’m more often stuck is in the throes of comparison and confusion in discerning my unique calling or vocation. 

But I think there may be hope for me and anyone else still wondering and wandering. In his short book, Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer says, “Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.” 

For sure, this is hard. Listening to our lives (or to each other!) is nearly a lost art in this day and age. We are more adept at talking about our lives, white-knuckling our lives, numbing our lives, possibly even wasting our lives. But listening to them is difficult. 

Adding to this, I think as we listen we also have to trust that the Lord will show us the way forward with signposts and affirmations from our community and the people around us. 

In Bread for the Journey, Henri Nouwen says: “It is very important to realize that our vocation is hidden in where we are and who we are. We are unique human beings, each with a call to realize in life what nobody else can, and to realize it in the concrete context of the here and now.

“We will never find our vocations by trying to figure out whether we are better or worse than others. We are good enough to do what we are called to do. Be yourself!” 

I appreciate Nouwen’s reminder that the call is to be our best and truest selves. My goal is not for the mountains or the masses to remember me. My aim is to know myself and be myself a little more fully each year—living and loving as one who knows her place and purpose and who is faithful to both. 

Nouwen goes on to say in his devotion, Do Well the Few Things: “I have to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and on those who followed him and trust that I will know how to live out my mission to be a sign of hope in this world.” 

Even for those of us who are switching lanes or still trying to discern our “thing,” our charge is to keep showing up to each day and to each person in front of us with our eyes, ears, and hearts open. And as Ruth Haley Barton writes, “We must trust that our true self is hidden with Christ in God, to be revealed as God sees that we are ready to live into it.” 

I take comfort in these words from wise and thoughtful writers. Our individual paths may not yet be clear, our purposes may still be fuzzy and unfolding. I may not fully understand my unique purpose today or tomorrow. I may have to keep listening and trusting for awhile. But the way forward is always one foot in front of the other, with eyes fixed on Jesus, hearts anchored in truth, and hands and feet ready to be a sign of hope in this wild and weary world.

With God’s help, each one of us can do that thing.